


a patient etherized

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Manipulation, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: He can’t have come into the world full-formed. There must have been a time before, but he can’t remember it. Everyone else has a before - he hears them talking of it, soldiers of past battles, agents of past missions, doctors of past surgeries. He doesn’t have a Before but he does have an arm of metal and one of flesh.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malapropism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/gifts).



> Title from [Here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/44212)

He exists, simply. He is loyal, he obeys. He serves. 

He is Asset and Winter and It and  _ Soldat. _

He is loyal. He is loyal because he wants to be.

 

* * *

 

He can’t have come into the world full-formed. There must have been a time before, but he can’t remember it. Everyone else has a before - he hears them talking of it, soldiers of past battles, agents of past missions, doctors of past surgeries. He doesn’t have a Before but he does have an arm of metal and one of flesh.

They made him, he thinks sometimes. Made his arm, his armour, his weapons. Made his memories, he thinks on occasion; all of them are from their orders. Made him loyal, because he is loyal because he wants to be and no one else seems to be loyal like that.

 

* * *

 

He obeys. He doesn’t know how to do otherwise.

(He did once, but that had brought only pain. Pain and ice and electric shocks. So he stopped doing otherwise. He obeys. He obeys no matter what.)

They try to break him but they've built him too well for that. They'll question and needle and poke at his orders, try to make him doubt them so they can punish him. But they've made him too well for that. Even they can't break his obedience to his orders.

Sometimes he thinks -  _ knows  _ \- nothing can.

 

* * *

 

He’s loyal not just because he has to be but because he  _ wants _ to be. Because not wanting to obey his orders is (pain, punishment, ice, shocks) bad. Wrong. 

So he obeys.

There is freedom in this, in being so absolute. He is loyal because he wants to be because he needs to be because he must be. He has worked out the precision of it, the exact reason he must obey, and how he must obey.

He must obey without question. He must obey absolutely.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes his handlers seem to laugh at him. Sometimes he's not sure why. Other times he thinks he knows: they laugh at him for his loyalty, because he will not break his obedience even as they question him. He might laugh back, if he was allowed. Their loyalty is fallible and breakable, can be twisted with only a few words.

His is unbreakable.

 

* * *

 

There is something of this, he thinks sometimes. Other people are forged again in fire; he was forged in ice. There is an implacability to that, an implacability very few seem to match. Sometimes he thinks  _ my handler has it _ but sometimes he looks at his handler and they don’t.

It doesn’t matter. He obeys all the same.

 

* * *

 

Pierce has the implacability. He was forged in ice, not in fire, made to be still and certain, not flickering and fierce. He is a snake made of ice, he thinks, and has a certainty Rumlow lacks.

Rumlow is not even a fire, though, just a desire for it. One day, he thinks, that fire is going to explode over him, burn him to the bone.

 

* * *

 

But you can’t burn ice. You can’t turn away the winter.

 

* * *

 

Loyalty must be given, it cannot be taken. He knows that some of the handlers like to think that he obeys because he must, not understanding that he obeys because he choses to, that he is loyal because he wants to be. Some of them understand that he is loyal because he wants to be and laugh.

“A dog,” they say. 

He could almost sneer. Their loyalty is because they want power or money or something else. His loyalty is because he wants to be loyal. His loyalty is the more absolute.

 

* * *

 

But he wants to be loyal because he must be loyal. Because if he is not he will be punished. 

 

* * *

 

The loyalty cracks when he is sent against the man on the bridge.

_ I knew him, i knew him i knew him. _

This isn’t loyalty, that cracks it.

This is the realisation that he doesn’t want to be loyal.

 

* * *

 

He never has. He has been loyal because he wanted to because he must. Cyclical survival. He lives because he is loyal, he is loyal because he wants to be, he wants because he must, he must in order to live. 

He has never wanted because he can. Never been loyal because he is.

 

* * *

 

_ I knew him. _

 

* * *

 

He is certain when he is on the Helicarrier. He is certain. He is loyal.

_ Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. _

 

* * *

 

And he isn’t again.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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